With its “Rostov Mountains” and “sea coast of Belarus”, on p. An even more cheerful generation is coming.

According to the results of a 2014 survey, less than 60% of students at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University were able to confidently say where the Volga flows. Students went through options from the Azov and Black Seas to the North and Baltic Seas; at the Higher School of Economics they suggested that the Volga flows into Baikal, Oka, and the Pacific Ocean, and MSU - into the Moscow River, Yenisei, and Ob. Some students decided that “The Volga does not flow anywhere.”

A total of 151 students of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University were interviewed, 84 students High school economics and 35 MGIMO students in approximately equal numbers from all courses. Students were not offered answer options. Candidates were selected randomly. Not a single student could answer all the questions; 15 people could not answer any question at all. You can test yourself by taking a simple test created based on questions asked to students.

Modern it is quite enough to know the truism “The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea” for general development. But those who want to understand history must keep in mind that this statement is essentially false and first understand hydrological concepts.

Firstly, it would be more correct to talk about the river flowing into the Caspian Lake, because parts of the World Ocean are called seas, and the Caspian Sea is an endorheic lake that has no connection with the World Ocean and is called a sea by tradition, apparently due to its salty water and large size.

In other words, the Volga river basin with the Caspian Sea-lake isan inland waterway system completely isolated from the World Ocean. And this circumstance must be taken into account when studying the history of civilization, which spread mainly along the seas and waterways.

For example, there are only three “entry points” into the Volga basin from different seas, so that their historical significance is clear.

1. From the Baltic Sea, the first route is along the Neva - Volkhov - Msta - Tvertsa rivers, that is, the cities of St. Petersburg-Veliky Novgorod - Tver. That is why the capital was founded here, and not somewhere else. Russian Empire- Petersburg.

2. From the Black Sea along the Dnieper through the island of Khortitsa (the base of the Zaporozhye Cossacks) and Kiev in the upper reaches of the Dnieper there is the iconic “key city” Smolensk, then on the tributary of the Dnieper the junction city of Vyazma, from where one could get to the upper reaches of the Oka and Volga basins.

3. From the Sea of ​​Azov along the Don, then along the Tsimlya tributary (in the place of this river there is now the Tsimlyansk Reservoir) and along the Volga near modern Volgograd. TO anal Volga-Don approximately corresponds to bthe former land portage and it is not at all accidental that it was there in the settlement of Dubok that the administrative center of the Volga Cossacks was located, and not in the area of ​​the river mouth like all the other river Cossacks. Yes, that’s right, each Cossack army initially controlled its own river, the Cossacks were initially waterfowl and only at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries switched to horses.

Secondly, it is not the Volga that flows into the Caspian Sea-lake, but the Kama. According to one of the main hydrological criteria - full flow, at the confluence of the Volga and Kama, the latter is fuller + the additional criterion of a direct channel at the confluence, the Volga should be considered a tributary of the Kama, and not vice versa, and then it is the Kama that flows into the Caspian Sea. Therefore, the ancient authors are not at all mistaken when they write that the Ra (Volga) river flows from the Riphean/Ripean(Ural) mountains.

River basins can be compared to trees standing nearby, their crowns closing. Like trees by their trunks, all rivers are uniquely identified from the mouth, and further up the river for transport purposes it is necessary to determine the main watercourse, which is not always obvious.

For example, at the confluence of the Volga and Oka, the latter was fuller and according to this criterion could be considered the main watercourse, in which case it would be considered that the Volga flows into the Oka. But in this place the Volga has a straight channel and at approximately equal visual assessments Due to its full flow, it wins over the Oka the right to be called the main watercourse.

In other words, the name of the river used to apply to the watercourse starting from the mouth and upstream, based on practical purposes of navigation. In the 19th century, this principle was reversed, designating “one of the branches of the tree crown” as the source of the river - this is simpler, but has no practical meaning; navigable distances in many places are still measured from the mouths of rivers.

So the answer tosurvey "Where does the Volga flow?"the majority considers it generally known, primitive only because ofa modern view of rivers from top to bottom, from source to mouth andclear familiaritycertainty of the main watercourse.

The largest of all European rivers, the Volga, in Russia ranks only fifth in size, ahead of the rivers of Siberia and the huge Amur.

In total, the Volga covers a distance of 3,500 kilometers.

Almost along its entire length it is navigable, and about 3,000 kilometers is a tourist route along the river.

During its history, it changed its name twice. Initially, in ancient times, its name was Ra, then, already in the Middle Ages, the river was called Itil.

The Volga begins on the Valdai Hills, from a tiny stream. It’s hard to even believe that after 3.5 thousand kilometers this thin trickle will turn into a powerful water flow, replenishing the volume of the Caspian Sea by 8000 cubic meters every second.

Its waters cover an area equal in size to two Frances or five United Kingdoms. And there is no need to even talk about the importance of the river in the life, economy and culture of Russia. It is simply impossible to imagine the history of the peoples inhabiting the shores without it.

Basically, the Volga is distinguished by its calm disposition, quiet and measured flow. The majestic movement of its waters is, in some places, difficult to even notice. Previously, when there were no dams and reservoirs, the character of the river was steeper. There were also rifts and pitfalls. But the memory of them now remains only in legends and the names of coastal villages and cities.

However, in areas of reservoirs and in the lower reaches of the Volga it can be dangerous. A sad example and lesson of how one should not neglect the power of poetry is the tragedy of the motor ship Bulgaria...

More than two and a half hundred of its tributaries are themselves large deep rivers. One of them, the largest, Kama, is even larger than itself both in length and in depth.

There are more than 150 thousand more or less large rivers, the length of which exceeds 10 kilometers, in the Volga basin. Guidebooks convince you that you can get to almost anywhere in the world by water from here.

But it’s realistic to take a cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg, or in the other direction - Nizhny Novgorod and Astrakhan.

The Moscow Canal leads to the capital. The Volga-Baltic Waterway connects it with the Baltic Sea.

You can get to the Black and Azov Seas by passing through the Volga-Don Canal, and to the White Sea - through the White Sea-Baltic and North Dvina water systems.

The Volga also boasts huge fish resources. About 70 species of fish live here, more than half of which are commercial.

Here you can catch sterlet, stellate sturgeon and sturgeon, bream, herring and roach. The coastal areas are no less attractive. Shores – wonderful place for a relaxing holiday.

In summer, the water warms up to +25 degrees, and where the water thickness is not very large, the temperature reaches +30.

Currently, the Volga is usually divided into three parts: the Upper - from the source to the dam of the Gorky Hydroelectric Power Station, the Middle - from the dam of the Gorky Hydroelectric Power Station to the dam of the Kuibyshevskaya Hydroelectric Power Station, and the Lower - from the dam of the Kuibyshevskaya Hydroelectric Power Station to the mouth.

Upper Volga

The Upper Volga basin lies in the forest zone. The climate of this territory is mainly determined by continental air masses temperate latitudes. However, cyclones from the Atlantic often come here, bringing thaws and snowfalls in winter, and cold temperatures and rains in summer. Within the Valdai Upland, the annual precipitation reaches 800 mm, decreasing downstream to 600 mm. It is fed mainly by snow, accounting for 55-65% of the total runoff for the year; the share of rain is 10-15%, and groundwater - 35%. The amount of water that the tributaries of the Upper Volga collect from each square kilometer of their basins varies from 10-12 l/s (in the upper reaches) to 6-4 l/s (in the Oka basin).

The river network of the Upper Volga is dense and well developed. From the north, Selizharovka, Tverda, Medveditsa, Mologa, Sheksna, Kostroma, Nemda and Unzha carry water to it; these are its right tributaries. Of the left tributaries, the most significant are the Vazuza and Shosha. On average, the density of the river network is 0.30-0.35 kilometers per kilometer of catchment area. In the old days, during platoon (against the current) navigation, the abundance of streams and rivers created additional difficulties. Here is how the conditions for navigating ships along Tvertsa are described in the “Navigating Road Worker” of 1854: “...and in other places, bridges have not been made across small rivers, openings and swampy areas flowing into Tvertsa, and horse guides must go around five miles to the side or swim. And in other places, the inhabitants themselves set up bridges and ferries, for crossing the rivers they take an arbitrary fee from the horse guides.”

Beginning of the Volga River

The Volga originates in the north-west of the Tver region, not far from its border with the Novgorod region. Boardwalks near the village of Volgo-Verkhovye lead through a grassy swamp to a small gazebo house. Look through the hole cut in the floor - at the bottom of the pit, now rising and now falling, a key pulsating, escaping from the bowels of the earth. The sedge sways in the swamp, bowing to the light stream, as if it knows that it is destined to give rise to the largest river in Europe. Slowly a stream makes its way through the reeds among the bushes, running damp spruce forest, fearlessly dives into the lakes. In the upper reaches, one after another there are several reservoirs - lakes Maly Verkhit, Bolshoi Verkhit, Sterzh, Vselug, Peno and Volgo. The Volga dives like a thin stream into its first lake - Maly Verkhit, and flows out of Lake Peno as a real river. Beyond Lake Peno, its first right tributary, the Zhukopa River, flows into the Volga. Making intricate turns, the Volga flows along steep banks to the last lakes on its way, bearing the same name as it - the Upper and Lower Volgo. Following each other, similar to a river flood, they are 7 km long and only 2 km wide. At the end of the 1st - beginning of the 2nd millennium AD, a waterway passed through lakes Volgo, Peno, Vselug and Sterzh from the cities of the Upper Volga basin to Veliky Novgorod and further north to the Baltic.

There was another way to Veliky Novgorod. Before reaching the Upper Volga lakes, it was necessary to turn into the Selizharovka River and climb along it to Lake Seliger. From there there was a portage to the Pola River. By the way, until the middle of the 19th century, local residents sailed boats from Lake Seliger not only to Novgorod, but also to St. Petersburg.

It was possible to get to Novgorod by going up its left tributary Tvertsa. From Tverda there was a drag to Meta. This third road, as you already know, was chosen by Peter I for the construction of Russia’s first artificial waterway.

Almost a hundred and fifty years ago, in 1843, a beyshlot (water retaining dam) was erected 5 km below Lake Volgo. In the spring, when spring waters accumulate in front of it, the backwater spreads upstream the river all the way to Lake Sterzh and in place of the Upper Volga lakes a single large reservoir appears, almost 100 km long. The Upper Volga Beishlot was built to improve navigation conditions during low water periods. Thanks to water releases, it was possible to raise the river horizon near Tver by 27 cm, near the mouth of the Shoshi River - by 22, near the city of Kalyazin - by 16, and near Rybinsk - by 7 cm. The water accumulated during the spring in the Upper Volga reservoir was usually consumed within two months. At the same time, the work of the Verkhnevolzhsky beishlot was linked with the work of the Vyshnevolotsk hydroelectric complex in such a way that water releases from the reservoirs they controlled were supplied alternately. At the same time, water from the Verkhnevolzhsky and Vyshnevolotsky reservoirs was rarely supplied to the Volga - only in emergency situations. Then the water level in the river rose by 13 cm near Rybinsk.

Passenger shipping on the Volga

And today, passenger shipping from Tver to Rzhev, over a distance of more than 180 km, is carried out thanks to water releases from the Upper Volga beishlot. Usually, in dry years, the water reserves behind the dam last until mid-August. The average long-term annual water flow through the Upper Volga Beishlot after its reconstruction in 1943-1947 is 29.7 m3/s, the minimum is 14.2, and the maximum is 54.1 m3/s. The hydrological regime is now affected by water releases from the Verkhnevolzhskoe reservoir only up to the mouth of the Darkness River, which flows into the Volga near Tver; downstream the backwater of the Ivankovo ​​reservoir is felt.

The section from the Verkhnevolzhsky beishlot to Tver is usually rarely mentioned. Maybe because it lies away from the main waterways, and maybe because the Volga here is not at all similar to the one we know from the paintings of Levitan, Repin and other Russian artists. Here it is narrow and rapids; The steep banks overgrown with forest, stones and a strong current that tries to knock you off your feet at the fords make it look like a river in the foothills. Between Selizharovka and Itomlya, over a distance of 73 km, there are 12 rapids on the Volga. The water bubbles among the stones, tight streams collide and knock against each other, forming breakers, whirlpools and tides. The largest rapids, the Vienna rapids, are located near the village of Yelets. Once upon a time they were the most difficult for piloting ships. The fall of the river here over one kilometer reaches 3 meters. In this section, the Volga is a chain of noisy waterfalls, white with foam.

Some of the rapids in the channel arose from accumulations of boulders washed out by water, while others formed in places where limestones came to the surface. The threshold of the village of Koshevo, for example, is rocky, the Dyagel rapid and the rapids are gravel, and the Mnroslavl and Spas rapids arose at the outcrops of a smooth limestone slab. In former times, when lifting ships, each barge relied on 9-12 horses with 2-3 guides, and when rafting, 8-16 oarsmen and always a pilot.

Like a gorge, the Volga water rushes through the Staritsa Gate - a deep, narrow valley near the city of Staritsa. In some places, at the foot of the banks, which look like stonework destroyed by time, quite powerful springs break out in the spring.

Only after the settlement of Brody, when the Volga reaches the Upper Volga Lowland, its valley expands to 200 m, and its banks decrease. There are fewer rapids on the river after it leaves the Valdai Hills, but shallows appear. The most difficult to pass were considered the Omechenskaya shoal near the mouth of the Darkness River and upstream, next to the gravel Bereza rift, the Voevodinskaya shoal. Currently, the Volga channel from Tver upstream has been deepened and cleared of shoals for approximately 30 km. Up the river, the depths necessary for navigation are supported very successfully by semi-dams, which are constructed from rock raised from the river bottom when cleaning the fairway. The soils here are heavy and the riverbed is stable.

In the 19th century, navigation in the Upper Volga basin lasted approximately 190 days. The first ships set off when there were still blocks of ice on the shore and on the islands, although the willows were already rinsing their fluffy earrings in the fast water and the yellow lights of coltsfoot flashed along the slopes of the ditches. The last caravans took place at the end of October, when the first frosts bleached the fallen leaves and grass in the mornings, and from time to time a rare snowball began to fall from the low sky. The Upper Volga rose in early November, and the spring ice drift on it within the Tver province (Kalinin region), according to observations for the years 1837-1853, began on April 10. After the creation of the Moscow Sea, both the freezing and the opening of the Volga moved to more late dates. And now the spring ice drift on it will probably begin even later. After all, since 1977, Vazuza’s runoff has been transferred to the Moscow reservoir system.

The “Shipping Road Worker” of 1854 states that the spring water level in the rivers of the Tver province exceeded the low-water level by 8.5 m, and in other years - by 13 m. Floods were high on the Upper Volga in 1709, 1719, 1770, 1777, 1807 , 1838, 1849, 1855, 1867, 1908, 1926 and 1947. “In the city part along the river bank in the stone blocks, the lower housing, as well as most of the petty bourgeois houses and the Yamskaya settlement, while the Zatmatskaya and Zatveretskaya parts, almost all, except for the houses standing on the highest places, were understood by it,” describes the floods in Tver in 1770 and 1777 "Geographical Monthly" for 1780. During the flood of 1838, over 760 houses were flooded in Tver, and the low-lying parts of the city were under a layer of water of 3.2 meters! Nowadays, in the spring, the water in the Volga near Tver usually rises by 6-7 meters, but it can also be higher: in the flood of 1947, its rise reached 11 m.

Near the city of Zubtsov, the highest water rise recorded since 1892 was observed on April 23, 1908 - it exceeded the low-water level by 12 m, and near the city of Staritsa, downstream of the river, by 11 m. At the same time, the highest level of water rise coincided with its the highest flow rate, reaching 4060 m3/s at Staritsa. The lowest water flow in the Volga for this city was recorded on January 12-13, 1940; it was only 11.2 m3/s. Near Tver, the lowest water consumption was recorded in 1941, it was 14 m3/s, which is 15 times less than the annual average. Very low water levels in the upper reaches of the Volga were observed on August 23-24, 1939. Previously, in low-water years, it was possible to ford the Volga near Tver during low-water periods. It’s hard to believe this when you stand on the river embankment in Tver today. After the creation of the Ivankovo ​​Reservoir, the width of the Volga there reaches 250 meters, and large three-deck motor ships moor at the pier of the River Station.

Water flow in the upper reaches, depending on the season and water availability of the year, can change 365 times! Remember the water consumption near the city of Staritsa - 4060 m3/s and 11.2 m3/s. However, after a dam blocked the path of Vazuza near the city of Zubtsov, seasonal fluctuations in water flow downstream were somewhat smoothed out. After all, in the spring, Vazuza carried the bulk of the flow to the Volga (about 80%). And when a reservoir appears near the city of Rzhev, the river flow will be regulated almost completely. The Rzhev hydroelectric complex will protect downstream villages and agricultural lands from spring floods, and in the future, perhaps, will be used to replenish the Dnieper with Volga water.

Almost 100 years separate the construction of the first Upper Volga reservoir and the second, Ivankovsky, which is often called the Moscow Sea. In 1937, near the village of Ivankova, the channel was blocked by a dam, and the floodplain by a dam. The total length of the barrier was about 9 km. As a result of the water spill, a vast reservoir with an area of ​​327 km2 was formed, with many islands, bays and bays of the most intricate shapes. Don’t look for the village of Ivankova on the map; in its place is now green, somewhat subtly reminiscent of the southern city of Dubna.

The Moscow Canal, connecting the Volga with the capital, begins from the Ivankovo ​​Reservoir. The lock was assigned number one, and the pier, although small, was called the Big Volga.

At the top, the Moscow Sea looks like a full-flowing river, with pine forests along the banks, islands, sandy beaches. There are also a lot of forests below, but the coastline is swampy for a long distance. In some places, rafting water creeps from the shore onto the motionless, as if drowsy, water. Approximately half of the reservoir's water area is shallow - no more than 2 m deep - and is heavily overgrown. About 40% of the area of ​​the water surface of the Shosha Bay is already covered with water lilies, telores, watchwort, cinquefoil and other aquatic plants.

All tributaries of the Volga, which flow into it below the River of Darkness, are backed up by the Moscow Sea. Along Tvertsa, for example, the backwater extends for 31 km, and the lower reaches of the Shosha have completely turned into a bay - the Shosha Reach. Rivers bring 98.1% to the Moscow Sea total number of water entering it, and precipitation - 1.9%. At the same time, the Volga accounts for 57% of the surface inflow, Shosha - 18%, and Tverda - 25% (although this also includes 8% of the flow coming from the Vyshnevolotsk reservoir, which belongs to the Volkhov basin).

The amplitude of water level fluctuations in the Ivankovo ​​Reservoir is significant - up to 6 m. Its hydrological regime is determined not only by the operation of the hydroelectric power station, but also by the needs of Moscow's water supply. As a rule, 25% of the total volume of water released from the Ivankovo ​​Reservoir is sent to the Moscow Canal, and 75% goes further, down the huge water ladder that descends from Tver to Volgograd.

The second step of this ladder is the Uglich reservoir. It stretches from the dam of the Ivankovo ​​reservoir to the dam of the Uglich hydroelectric station. The Uglich reservoir is smaller in area than the Ivankovo ​​reservoir, but deeper, and as a result, the useful volume of water in them is the same. The Volga Valley here is not wide - from 0.5 to 1.0 km, and its banks limited the river flood during the construction of the dam near Uglich. Dark forests, sandbanks and a leisurely current make the Uglich Reservoir quite picturesque. At this time of year, in the area from the lock to the city of Kimry, the current speed sometimes reaches 7 km/h. Only when you sail past the mouths of the Medveditsa and Nerl, which have turned into bays, and the shores part to a width of 3 km or more, and even when you see the half-submerged bell tower near Kalyazin, you realize that this is after all a reservoir. The city moved to higher ground, but left the bell tower in its old place, and now it rises out of the water like a lighthouse. How narrow it was great river near Kalyazin, even if now the distance between the banks is no more than 200 meters, and the bell tower looms almost in the middle!

Before the regulation of the Volga by the Ivankovsky and Uglich reservoirs, in low-water years, small steamers plied from Uglich to Tver for only 10-12 days, and even then only in the first half of the summer. The river in this section was replete with shoals, boulder rapids and whirlpools. What has not been done to improve shipping conditions! The banks bristled with numerous dams, water-restricting walls and half-dams. To construct them, old, out-of-date barges and matting coolies stretched on stakes were used, but most often wooden shields and fascinated fences were used. The Medveditskaya shoal near the mouth of the Medveditsa River, the Sukharinskaya shoal near the village of Sukharino and many others, which caused so much trouble for the river workers, disappeared forever into the depths of the reservoir. And it seems that the Volga has always been wide and deep here.

Rybinsk Reservoir

Beyond Uglich is the Rybinsk Reservoir. Filling it with water began in the spring of 1941, but the Rybinsk Sea acquired its final shape only in 1947. In area it is 14 times larger than the Moscow Sea. Its central part, similar to a lake, is called the Main Reach. Far to the northwest stretch from it along the flooded valleys of the rivers Sheksninsky and Modogsky reaches, and the Volzhsky reach goes south, to the Uglich dam. From the Uglich dam to the Sheksninsky hydroelectric complex - 250 km. The greatest width of the Rybinsk Reservoir is 56 km, and the greatest depth - where the Ukhra River once flowed into the Sheksna - exceeds 30 m. The share of precipitation in the annual supply of this huge reservoir is about 10%. Meanwhile, in channel reservoirs the share of precipitation in the annual nutrition balance usually does not exceed 2%.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, about 17 thousand years ago, on the site of the Rybinsk Sea there was a cold glacial lake. Gradually, over many hundreds of years, the rivers lowered it, and the vast Mologo-Sheksninskaya lowland arose. Now the waves are splashing over her again. The banks of the Rybinsk Reservoir are mostly low, along its coast there are damp meadows, forests, swamps, in some places there are scatterings of water-washed boulders, and in the shallow waters there are stumps exposed by erosion, similar to octopuses.

The ship's fairway along the Main Reach runs away from the shores. The water ripples with silvery scales and sparkles under the sun, reflecting the dim northern sky. An hour passes and another, no land is visible. Even the seagulls fell behind; their burrs were inaudible. It seems that the diesel engines will turn off and you will become deaf from the silence that surrounds you, and around, as far as the eye can see, the silvery radiance of the water and the sky overturned above it still shimmers and sparkles. True, the Rybinsk Sea is rarely so deserted - after all, a shipping route passes through it. It is not often that it is so serenely calm. Storms on the Main Reach are sometimes severe, the height of steep asymmetrical waves, according to some sources, reaches 2 m, according to others - even 3 m! Otherwise, the reservoir will suddenly be shrouded in fog, as if covered with a cloud. From the stern of the boat, sometimes its bow is not visible, and then the ships stand and wait until the fog is visible and clears.

With the advent of the Rybinsk Sea, the climate in the areas adjacent to it changed somewhat. Summer has become cooler, and the amount of precipitation during the growing season has increased from 250 to 300 mm.

More than 60 rivers carry water to the Rybinsk Reservoir. The share of surface inflow in its nutrition is 91.5%, and precipitation 8.5%. The average annual amplitude of changes in water level in the Rybinsk Reservoir reaches 3.5 - 4 m. Its level regime reflects not only the operation of hydroelectric power stations, but also wind denivelations (i.e., surge fluctuations in the water surface). With a stable wind direction, the skew of the water surface of the reservoir reaches 1 m or more.

The ice regime of the Rybinsk Sea is severe. Its main reach is cleared of ice only three weeks after the end of the ice drift on the Volga. In order not to delay the start of navigation, the ice on the reservoir has to be broken by icebreakers. By the way, the Upper Volga, even before regulation, was usually not opened everywhere at the same time. In the section from Rybinsk to Gorky, the ice cover always lasted 10 days longer than upstream and downstream. And water spills began there on the river even before the ice passed through.

Three water roads diverged in the 18th-19th centuries from Rybinsk - along Sheksna (Mariinsk water system), along Mologa (Tikhvin water system) and up the Volga (Vyshnevolotsk water system). The city served as an important transshipment base; above it, only small vessels sailed on the rivers of the Volga basin. At the height, or, as they used to say in the old days, at the collapse of shipping, so many ships used to accumulate near Rybinsk that it was possible to cross them, like a bridge, from one bank of the Volga to the other. And the width of the river near the barge hauler capital was considerable - almost 500 m. Rybinsk was the largest port city in the Upper Volga, tens of thousands of barge haulers and loaders gathered there for navigation. Up to 100 million poods of grain cargo alone passed through it, and this is quite a lot by modern standards. In 1840, 1,078 ships sailed from Rybinsk along the Sheksna, 1,491 ships along the Mologa, and 3,298 ships up the Volga. On the way from Rybinsk to Tver they had to overcome 31 miles of shoals. Meanwhile, in other years, the depths above the Koprin shoals near the mouth of Mologa during low water did not exceed 28-44 cm. The Telyatinskaya shoal near Korcheva, and many others, were not easy for navigating ships. Their barges literally crawled on their bellies. It’s hard to even imagine now that this happened. Today, heavy-duty river-sea vessels and three-deck passenger ships transit through Rybinsk, calmly gliding along the water surface of man-made seas. The Volga cities are no longer threatened by floods and high waters, but before the regulation of the Volga, the water level in it near Yaroslavl used to rise 10 meters above the low-water level, near Kostroma - by 11 m!

Among the man-made seas of the Upper Volga, Rybinsk is the largest. The area of ​​the Gorky Reservoir lying below it is three times smaller, although its length is considerable - 430 km. The filling of the Gorky Reservoir with water began when the Rybinsk Sea was already eight years old. Fleeing from the rising water, the ancient Puchezh moved to the mountain, climbed higher, having first fortified its banks, Ples, Yuryevets and other cities. By April 20, 1957, the river level had risen by 12 m at the dam. Islands and sand spits, wide meadow floodplains and Volozhkas - secondary Volga branches - disappeared into the depths of the waters. Simultaneously with the Gorky Reservoir, the Kostroma Reservoir, a daughter reservoir, was created to replenish its water reserves on the Kostroma River. As a result, Kostroma now flows into the Volga not near the city of Kostroma, but 14 km upstream - near the village of Samet. In its lower reaches, before the dam blocking the river near the village of Kunikov, a bay arose. The Ipatiev Monastery, which stood on the right bank of Kostroma, ended up on an island, albeit a very vast one. A number of monuments of ancient architecture, including a lovely wooden church from the early 18th century, were moved to his courtyard from the flood zone in the Kostroma lowland. Although the Kostroma Reservoir is 26 times smaller in area than the Gorky Reservoir, it is not small at all - the Moscow Sea is only 2 times larger.

Gorky Reservoir

The Gorky Reservoir stretches along the Volga valley, sometimes narrowing to almost 200 m, sometimes spreading in breadth for many kilometers, from Rybinsk to the ancient Russian city of Gorodets, where Alexander Nevsky died. Where the Volga crosses the Uglich-Danilovskaya and Galichsko-Chukhloma uplands, its deep and narrow valley limits the overflow, and the reservoir in the area from Rybinsk to Kineshma resembles a leisurely full-flowing river with white sandbanks, high forested banks, from which wonderful views open up. to the meadows and beyond the river. But then the Volga reaches the Unzhenskaya lowland, and its valley expands. From the town of Yuryevna, the opposite bank of the reservoir can only be guessed - it is 16 km away. Vast bays formed in the lower reaches of Unzha and Nemda. True, in the past, in the spring there were also wide, sometimes up to 30 km, floods there.

Almost along its entire length, the right bank of the Gorky Reservoir is high and steep, and the left bank is low and meadow. Only within the Yaroslavl-Kostroma lowland, from the ship on both sides, the surrounding green hills, villages and copses, hidden in other places behind the high bank, are clearly visible. Blocking the view, the red wall of the coastal cliff sometimes stretches for many kilometers. Its top, as if it really were a wall, is absolutely even, as if someone had cut off every single hillock and bump with a knife. Along the edge of the cliff, as if at a parade, trees were lined up, and in some places the grass was simply green. It seems that further from the shore, all the way to the horizon, the surface of the earth is smooth and flat, like a table. In some places - near Yuryevets, Chkalovsk - the steep banks of the reservoir are open to the surf. During storms, muddy waves fall upon them with force one after another. Like a battering ram, a wave hits the shore and, rolling back, carries away pieces of rock. In the coastal zone, water turbidity in bad weather reaches 10,000 mg/l. In the Yellow River, which is called the muddiest river in the world, 1 liter of water contains 6000 mg of suspended sediment. Typically, the turbidity of water in the rivers of the Volga basin does not exceed 100 mg/l even during a flood. At the end of the 19th century, scientists noticed that shallows arise not only from river sediments. The wind also contributes to their formation. It not only creates waves that destroy the banks, but also simply carries sand from them into the river. The Urakovsky roll, for example, always became very shallow after storms. According to calculations by track engineer V.A. Nefediev, a storm once brought about 400 thousand cubic meters of sand to the Shaluginsky rift. And this is not surprising: after all, the banks of the Volga and the rivers of its basin have been stripped of forest since the 16th century, it was cut down by shipbuilders, timber merchants and simply peaceful farmers. In 1785, the expedition of the captain-lieutenant of the Russian fleet Joseph Billing, heading to Siberia, passed through the Kazan province among dense oak forests, and returning 30 years later along the same road, not only did not find individual trees, but even bushes - everything was bare ...

In 1829, to assist in guiding ships through the rifts on the Volga, a special Hardcoat half-battalion with 18 rowing vessels was created. Near the city of Kostroma, the fairway was so narrow that oncoming ships had difficulty passing, and in low-water years they more than once had to be pulled off the shoals by “the people.” In the summer, both near Kostroma and Yaroslavl, it was possible to ford the Volga. In order to guide ships through the Kharchevinsky riffle, located 21 km upstream from Kostroma, during low water it was necessary to build a temporary dam from matting bags stretched on stakes. A serious obstacle to navigation was the Varvarinekaya shoal between two islands approximately 6 km downstream from Yuryevets, and the Kostinsky rift - 28 km below it, and the Shirmokshanskaya shoal near Puchezh, and the Perelomkskaya shoal...

The annual amplitude of water level fluctuations in the Gorky Reservoir usually does not exceed 2-3 m. In the upper part, its hydrological regime depends on the operating mode of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station, in the lower part - on the Gorky hydroelectric power station, and in the central part, the water regime set by hydroelectric power plants is also superimposed influence of tributaries. In the area of ​​the mouth of the Elnat River, for example, at a depth of 4 m, forward currents account for 64%, and reverse ones - 36%. During the spring flood period, little water usually comes from the Rybinsk Sea, so the filling of the Gorky Reservoir is determined mainly by its supply from tributaries, the total area of ​​which is 79,000 km2. In two spring months, April and May, 16% of the total annual runoff passes near Yaroslavl, and before the regulation of the Volga, 50% of the annual runoff passed here in the same period. But the average monthly runoff during the winter period increased approximately three times. According to M.S. Pakhomov, after the regulation of the Upper Volga, its flow increased during low-water periods in high-water years by 20-30%, and in low-water years - by 90%.

From the Gorky hydroelectric power station dam to Gorky is a little over fifty kilometers. In the 16th century, this city, then called Nizhny Novgorod, was “the easternmost limit of Rus'.” For many years it served as the water gate of Moscow, covering the route upstream along the Oka. After merging with the Oka, the amount of water in the Volga increases sharply, and the valley expands greatly. From the high bank from the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin to the distances beyond the river there is such a view that it will take your breath away. As if on a model, meadows, villages, oxbow lakes, groves lie before you, and behind them in a light foggy haze - again meadows, again villages, and oxbow lakes, and groves... you can’t look at everything at once, you can’t take in everything...

“It is possible to point out few such areas,” wrote V.V. Dokuchaev, “which were separated by a water ribbon 300-500 fathoms wide and differed so sharply from each other.” Near Gorky, where the Kasimovskaya ridge passes, the right bank of the Volga rises to 80-90 m, in the Ulyanovsk region its height reaches 200 m, and in the Sengiley region - 300 m. Those standing from the river seem very tiny, like tin toys made by the left-handed Leskovsky on the slope there are people and galloping horses. In some places, the yellow-brown cliffs, colored with white horizontal stripes, are absolutely vertical; in some places, paths wind along the steep slopes and landslides are visible. Through numerous gullies and ravines cutting through the shore, the distances of the right bank open from the water, as if through an open gate. The soft line of hills running towards the horizon looks like frozen waves. And along the left, low bank there are shallows of white sand, water meadows and vastness, endless vastness...

After merging with the Oka, the Volga continues to flow in a latitudinal direction approximately to Kazan, and then turns along the eastern slope of the Volga Upland to the south, and the climate begins to change noticeably. Summer is becoming hotter and drier, and spring and autumn are becoming shorter. Annual precipitation, decreasing in the direction from northwest to southeast, is usually 700-500 mm. At the same time, the difference in precipitation between the opposite banks of the Volga reaches 100 mm: on the right, upland, there is more precipitation than across the river.

The river network of the Middle Volga is well developed, among its right tributaries it would be enough to name one Oka, among the left - only the Kama, and there would already be plenty; but Sura, Sviyaga, Kerzhenets, Vetluga, Bolshaya Kokshaga and Bolshaya Cheremshan also carry their waters into it. Unlike the tributaries of the Upper Volga, most of which originate from watershed swamps, the rivers of the Middle Volga begin from springs at the bottom of ravines and gullies.

The Middle Volga is not yet fully regulated. The section from Gorodets to Cheboksary remains a river for now, but soon the waters of the Cheboksary Reservoir will come there. Its filling began in the summer of 1980. In the meantime, river-sea vessels pass Kocherginskie Ogrudki, Gorodetskiy and other riffles between Gorky and Gorodets when releasing water from the Gorky Reservoir, which are provided for these purposes at a certain time. The hydrological regime here is complex. In the spring, during high water, when little water comes from the Gorky Reservoir, the backwater from the Oka spreads up the Volga all the way to Gorodets. But the flood subsides, and the water level in the Volga, caused by backwater from the Oka, also drops. The dam of the Cheboksary reservoir will raise the horizon of the Volga near the city of Gorky by 5 m. This will be quite enough not only for all the riffles that interfere with navigation, but also for numerous islands to disappear into the depths of the waters. The backwater from the Cheboksary reservoir will spread tens of kilometers up the Bolshaya Kokshaga, along the Sura, Vetluga, Kerzhenets and Oka, forming bays. Now the confluence of the Oka and Volga in the city of Gorky is clearly visible. The Oka has yellowish-brown water, similar in color to coffee with milk, while the Volga has a gray, steely tint. Floating on the water along the boundary between the two rivers, chips and small debris strictly adhere to this boundary, emphasizing it even more. If you climb observation deck to the Kremlin, then through binoculars you can distinguish small gray-blue and brown waves running perpendicular to each other.

Having spilled over an area of ​​2270 km2, the Cheboksary Reservoir will not only improve navigation conditions in the Middle Volga, but will also decorate a number of cities and villages of the Middle Volga. In Cheboksary, for example, in place of two deep ravines dividing the city, blue bays will appear and the distant dusty city outskirts will turn into a green zone.

Despite a large number of water that the Oka brings, and downstream, navigation on the Volga did not become noticeably easier or safer. The Navigable Road Guide indicates 11 miles of shoals in the area between the Oka and Kama. The most tricky of the rifts there were considered Sobshchensky and Telyatinsky, which were sometimes called Veal Ford. In low-water years, ships often had to pause before these rapids - to reload goods into small, shallower pauses in the water. You can get some idea of ​​how complex the Volga fairway was by reading the notes of the secretary of the Schleswig-Golyntin embassy, ​​Adam Olearius. The ship on which he sailed took nine hours to overcome the Veal Ford, and it probably had a pilot on board.

The Dutch sailing master Jan Streis also complains in his notes that it is difficult to move along the Volga due to many shoals. While taking off from them, his ship lost several anchors. Particularly painful for Streis was the shallow area near the confluence of the Kokshagi River, where he allegedly had to break through 11 miles of shoals.

The Volga, like any river, carries not only water, but also sediment. At low flow rates, sediment is usually deposited on the river bottom in the form of transverse ridges. On large rivers their height can reach 10 m and their length can reach several kilometers. If you go down a river and measure the depths in a boat, you will find an alternation of holes and rises. What is surprising is not the mere presence of ridges in river beds, but their movement downstream. Soviet hydrologist I.V. Popov in his book “Riddles of the River Bed” talks about how a sand ridge sliding down the Volga River covered the wastewater dispersal pipe of the Volga Automobile Plant. The thickness of the sand deposits turned out to be 4 m, and the pipeline laid in the same area along the bottom hovered at a height of several meters.

Before the regulation of the Volga, sand moved along its bed over a year at a distance of 2 to 16 km, constantly making changes to the directions. Some shallows disappeared, and easily surmountable rifts suddenly seemed to grow when they were covered by a sand ridge. Rivers are very mobile systems. They quickly respond to the slightest changes in their basin of precipitation, temperature, and the nature of vegetation not only by changes in water levels and current speeds, but also by the amount of sediment and modification of the channel profile. The most intense channel processes usually develop in the spring, when the water flow acquires the greatest speed and strength. During high water, new shoals form in river beds, old channels are covered with sand, new channels are washed away, and their channels sometimes shift along the bottom of valleys at a speed of up to 10 m per day.

The main flow of the Volga near Samara in mid-19th century, in five years it completely moved from one side of the sandbank that lay in the middle of the river to its other side. Vasilsursk was built on the Sura River, but the Volga, washing away the right bank, constantly pressed the river flowing into it until it finally occupied its mouth. This is how Vasilsursk found itself on the Volga. Yuryevets was built on the banks of the Volga, but by the middle of the 19th century the river had moved a considerable distance away from it. At the beginning of the 20th century, 10 km from the Volga were the ruins of the ancient capital of the Volga Bulgarians, 5 km away was Kazan, which also once stood on the banks of the Volga.

There are many examples of channel movement. In 1587, it eroded the shore so much near the walls of the Pechersky Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod that a landslide occurred and the church was destroyed. More than once the river approached the Makaryevsky Monastery, which stood near the mouth of the Kerzhenets River. During the spring flood of 1839, the bed of the Volga moved so close to its walls that the monks urgently began to strengthen the bank. After 10 years, the Volga again went on the offensive, digging out a 30 m deep pool near the south-eastern tower of the monastery wall. This was its last attack on the holy monastery, after which the river began to move away from the monastery.

Rarely did a spring ice drift on the Middle Volga not bring trouble. Huge ice blocks peeled off and crushed the shores, climbed into the backwaters, breaking the ships wintering there. In 1879, the river destroyed and eroded the bank at the Simbirsk pier in Nizhny Novgorod. Unable to resist its pressure, many Volga tributaries in the spring for 10-20 km sometimes flowed backwards. In high-water years, the violence of the Volga knew no bounds. Huge waves tossed large ships like splinters, threatening every minute to smash them against the rocks of the high shore. Diving in the muddy waves, uprooted trees, houses, fences, barrels, and boards rushed along the swollen river. There were severe floods in the Middle Volga in 1709, 1829, 1856, 1888 and 1926. In April 1829, the Volga near Nizhny Novgorod was still under ice, when the water began to rise quickly and rose by 12 m!

Fluctuations in water content in the Middle Volga before its regulation were very large. On May 9, 1926, the flow rate near Nizhny Novgorod, for example, reached 38,000 m3/s, and in March 1940 in the same section it was only 432 m3/s (the average annual water flow rate for the period from 1911 to 1950 was 7647 m3/s). With). The floods in the area of ​​the Kama estuary, where the waves of the largest of the Volga reservoirs, the Kuibyshevsky reservoir, now splash, were especially powerful, majestic in their unbridled elemental force. In the Kuibyshev Reservoir, everything is huge - the area of ​​the water surface, equal to 6500 km2 and consisting of eight reaches, and the depth, reaching 45 m in the dam part. In the narrowest places, its width is 3-5 km, and opposite the Kama mouth it reaches 38 km! Three-deck passenger ships seem quite small in the vastness of the Kuibyshev Sea.

The left bank of the reservoir is low and meadow along almost its entire length, while the right bank is high, steep, and in places so cut up by ravines that from a distance it appears to be made up of separate pieces of rock. From the water, they can be mistaken for huge, gloomy, windowless houses lined up along the river. Downstream, the rectangular shape of the “houses” gives way to a tented shape, and huge dark yurts appear along the water’s edge... Gradually the right bank, softly outlined by landslides, becomes lower.

But near the bay, on the site of the former mouth of the Usa River, Karaulnaya Mountain appears - a large hill from which you can see almost a hundred kilometers around. Once upon a time, Cossacks performed guard duty there. When they saw the Tatars or Nogais, they lit a fire on the top of the mountain. Further, even further downstream, stand the Molodetsky Kurgan and nearby, as if leaning on it, a small round hill - Devya Gora, behind them there are more hills. Forest, rocks... Zhiguli starts from here. Bypassing them from the east, the Volga describes a steep 150-kilometer loop, which, after the city of Samara (Kuibyshev) located at its peak, is called the Samara Luka. Between the ends its distance is only 25 km. Before the regulation of the Volga, there was a circular water route along the Samara Luka, the remarkable thing of which was that you could go with the flow all the time. From Kuibyshev, boats went down to the southern end of Samarskaya Luka, from where there was a two-kilometer portage into the Usa River. Boats rushed quickly downstream along the Usa. Trees were leaning over the water, the water was rustling in the riffles, and the blue expanse of the northern end of the Samarskaya Luka suddenly opened up. And again down the Volga - already to Kuibyshev. The length of the Zhiguli “around the world” was 170 km.

Dam and reservoir of the Volzhskaya hydroelectric power station

The dam of the Volzhskaya Hydroelectric Power Station named after Lenin raised the water level in the Volga by 26 m, and the waters of the Kuibyshev Reservoir spread widely across the river's floodplain, flooding numerous oxbow lakes, lakes, Volozhkas, islands and shoals. About 300 villages and towns changed their location with the advent of the Kuibyshev reservoir. On the island was, for example, the city of Sviyazhsk, which previously stood on a tributary of the Volga, the Sviyaga River. And Stavropol, located in the lowlands on the left bank of the Volga, found itself at the bottom of the reservoir. Two and a half thousand of his houses had to be moved to a new location. Near Ulyanovsk, the water level in the Volga rose by 22 m, the entire left bank part of the city would have been flooded, but dams blocked the water’s path. More than 10 million m3 of soil had to be moved to protect Kazan from reservoir spills; Nine dams, two dams, several pumping stations and a whole network of drainage canals were built. But the waters of the Kuibyshev Reservoir still penetrated quite far onto the meadow shore. The monument to Russian soldiers who fell during the storming of Kazan in the 16th century that stood there is now on the island.

In the lower reaches of the rivers flowing into the Kuibyshev Reservoir, as a result of backwater, deep and extensive bays arose, stretching for tens of kilometers. Cities and villages that were previously far from the Volga now found themselves on its banks. Thus, Dimitrovgrad, located on Bolshoi Cheremshan, became a major Volga port.

100 rivers carry water to the Kuibyshev Sea. On the left bank the Kama, Bolshoy Cheremshan, Sok, and Bolshoi Kinel flow into it, on the right - Sviyaga, Usa. Surface inflow accounts for 98.7% of the reservoir's supply, and the share of precipitation falling on its surface accounts for only 1.3%.

The Kuibyshev Sea is the most stormy of all Volga reservoirs. During autumn storms, the wind force often reaches 9-11 points, and the wave height exceeds 3 m. Having received a warning about an impending storm, ships rush to take refuge in ports of refuge, equipped at river mouths and flooded ravines, to hide while the wind-driven wisps of dark the clouds and water dust and spray flying over the foamy shafts did not merge into one wildly spinning and howling chaos.

But this is in the fall. Storms are rare in summer. In the summer, the greenish water surface basks under the sun all long day, and the distant shore melts into the haze. In the evening, a red-hot red ball slowly descends into the heated water in the west, sunset fades, and the first stars appear in the darkening sky. And at night, a sea of ​​lights opens up from the captain’s bridge. Some of them glow with a calm, even light, the flashing buoys and gates are winking, as if talking in Morse code. The darkness hides distances, and it is difficult to figure out which lights are further, which are closer and where they are - on the shore or in the water, moving or not. Probably the higher ones are coastal ones, or maybe they are stars? You throw your head back, and the sky seems like a continuation of the dark river...

The water regime of the Kuibyshev Sea depends on the operating mode of the hydroelectric power station. Its influence is clearly felt even 100 km from the dam. However, directionally stable winds can cause noticeable surges of water on one shore and surges on the opposite shore. In the Tolyatti region, for example, with a wind from the north, the water rises by almost 1 m. Normal annual fluctuations in the water level in the Kuibyshev reservoir are 6-7 m. In the spring, when the hydroelectric power station releases water, in shallow waters ice falls on the bottom of the reservoir over an area of ​​hundreds of square meters kilometers.

The ice regime of the Kuibyshev Reservoir is complex. By the end of winter, the thickness of the ice off the coast above shallow depths often reaches 1 m, and in the Open part - 70 cm. As if in the north, somewhere in Lake Ladoga, hummocks here are 3 m high! When the Volga at the top is already free of ice and the sun is already hot like summer during the day, icebreakers pave the way for ships in the Kuibyshev Reservoir. You can’t believe your eyes when at the end of April you suddenly find yourself, after free water and warmth, in ice fields. Everywhere you look, there is gray ice crumble everywhere, among which in some places spots of completely winter-white ice floes brighten. There is fog over the reservoir, the ship moves slowly, the ice crumbs it moves apart sigh and rustle, swaying on the waves, glass pieces of ice tinkle.

Lower Volga

241 km3 of water per year flows from the Kuibyshev Reservoir to the Lower Volga. However, the Volga brings only about 240 km3 of water to the Caspian Sea. No, not only because its water is taken away for irrigation and other needs National economy. Remember the drawing of the hydrographic network. The lush crown of the Volga “tree” ends approximately at the Samarskaya Luka, just where the Lower Volga begins. The last major tributary is the Eruslan, below it there are no more “branches” on the “trunk” of the river, but the Lower Volga flows through a zone of steppes and semi-deserts. The climate there is continental, arid, and the average annual precipitation decreases to the south from 500 to 200 mm.

Despite the huge amount of water that the Lower Volga carries, there were also many shoals and riffles on it, a whole network of them stretched from Syzran to Astrakhan itself. And it was necessary to know the river well in order to navigate the ship there. High waters usually subsided on the Lower Volga by August and so quickly that ships that had unsuccessfully chosen a place to anchor for the night often found themselves stranded by the morning.

To ensure the depths required for navigation, the river fairway had to be systematically cleared of sand deposits. In the late 80s of the 19th century, the iron rake of engineer Bykov was used for this. They were a huge “harrow”, which was suspended at a certain depth between two boats, slowly towed by a steamer. Then rakes were replaced by dredging machines. As soon as the high water subsided, they began to remove sand from the fairway and worked until the freeze-up. Low water in the Lower Volga has always been stable. But the river carried sediment again and again, it lived according to its own laws.

It is not easy to stop or direct channel processes along a different path, even in small rivers. The sandy, unstable bed of the Volga has always caused rivermen a lot of trouble. At the beginning of the 20th century, near Kamenniy Yar, a thin Volozhka separated from the Volga, and Saralevsky Island arose between it and the Volga bed. Several decades passed, and the main flow of the river began to intensively move to the side of the Volozhka, and the old ship passage was covered with sand. In the 19th century, sediments blocked the approach of ships to Syzran, which was an important trading pier. During low water, the ships had to stop 4 km from the city, near the island. Khvalynsk found itself in an even more unenviable position in low water, from which at the end of the 19th century up to 5.2 million pounds of various cargo were sent every navigation - steamships anchored 7 km short of it.

Although, after the regulation of the Volga, riverbed processes slowed down, and now one cannot ignore them. Near Balakovo, for example, near Devushkiny Island, the river constantly carries sand onto the fairway, and motor ships bypassing the spit, entering the Saratov Reservoir, are forced to turn to the right almost 90°. In the area of ​​the Volzhskaya HPP named after Lenin, due to the strong erosion of the riverbed, there is no stable connection between water flows and its levels. The very first water releases after the completion of the construction of the hydroelectric complex led to the formation of a hole 14 m deep in the lower pool and erosion of the coast over a distance of 6 km. Therefore, the main provisions of the rules for the use of water resources provide for restrictions on the daily regulation of water regime. The flow rate of water supplied to the lower pool of the reservoir - the so-called base release - during the day should not be less than 2000 m3/s. And the amplitude of daily fluctuations in the level and water in the tailwater should not exceed 2.5 m at the dam and 2 m at the exit from the lower lock channel during the entire navigation period; at the same time, the water level at the river outlet site should not fall by more than 30 cm with average daily water releases of 4000 m3/s, and with smaller ones - by more than 1 m.

The Lower Volga begins behind the dam of the Lenin Volzhskaya Hydroelectric Power Station with the Saratov Reservoir, which extends along the Volga valley to Balakovo. Zhiguli stretches along it for almost 100 km. “The shores there are as beautiful as you can imagine,” wrote Jan Streis. Indeed, the green hills overlapping each other, among which here and there rise mountains covered with fir on the tops, are very picturesque. The villages, immersed in the white boil of bird cherry trees in the spring, clung trustingly to the foot of them. In autumn, the shores here are colored with gold and crimson, and everything around is filled with the reflection of the cold fire raging in Zhiguli. Deep, gorges-like hollows crawl like snakes into the depths of the mountains. Behind the ledges of forested rocks, the daring Volga freemen once hid, waiting for merchants floating below with goods. The entrances to the caves, where falcons and red ducks used to nest in large numbers, darken in the steep banks. Some of them can only be reached by rappelling down a steep cliff from above.

The huge Bakhilova Mountain, with its three narrow ridge peaks clearly visible against the sky, looks like a petrified prehistoric monster. Behind it, downstream, is the village of Shiryaevo, in which I. Repin wrote “Burlakov on the Volga.” It’s a pity that open-pit mining of limestone is currently underway there. The belly of the wonderful mountain, opened in tiers, turns dead brown, only its top is still intact and bristles with forest. The famous Tsarev Kurgan also failed to keep its head in our industrial age. Almost half of it has been razed and no longer stands out among the surrounding hills. Behind the Tsarev Kurgan, on the left bank of the reservoir, the Sokoly Mountains begin, and on the right rises Sulfur Mountain - sulfur was mined there under Peter I. Compressed on both sides by cliffs, the Volga valley narrows - ahead is the famous Zhiguli Gate. In former times, the current speed here reached 2.5 m/s, but now the surface of the water is always calm.

Beyond the Zhiguli Gate, the Volga Valley expands again. And again - islands, backwaters, white sandbanks. Before the river was regulated, the fairway ran almost all the time along the right bank, and from the ship the Zhiguli seemed even more majestic and beautiful. The one remaining behind the stern melts into a bluish haze Mountain country. Downstream the Shelekhmetovsky Mountains begin. On the steep banks, screes are visible everywhere; here and there, in the form of rounded columns or acute-angled pilasters, the parent rock appears through them. And it seems from a distance that an ancient fortress wall is hiding behind the scree.

Screes and landslides on the banks of the Volga are common. Along the steep slopes of its valley there are thick sandy-clayey strata, layered with aquifers, and the sandy bed of the river is unstable. About 100 years ago, not far from the city of Syzran, the entire village of Malaya Fedorovka slipped into the water. Adam Olearius in his notes talks about an incident that happened shortly before his voyage, when a ship anchored under the high bank of the Lower Volga was crushed by a huge block that fell into the river. Due to landslides, the city of Cherny Yar had to be moved to another location. Its buildings, along with part of the shore, collapsed into the water several times. The Volga also tried to dig under the village of Lebyazhinskaya, located not far from Astrakhan. Only after the regulation of reservoirs did the river become calmer.

Of all the reservoirs, Saratov is most similar to a powerful slow-moving river, although its width in some places reaches 10-17 km. But before regulation, the Volga with all its volozhkas, islands and backwaters was not narrow either! The similarity here, however, is not only external. The water exchange process occurs in the Saratov reservoir much faster than in other Volga reservoirs; It is the only reservoir among them with weekly rather than seasonal flow regulation. Its useful volume of water is only about 14% of the total, while for all other Volga reservoirs it exceeds 50%. In the Rybinsk Sea, the useful volume of water, for example, is approximately 66% of its total amount, in the Uglich Sea - 67%. When the Kuibyshev reservoir discharges water, the Saratov reservoir passes it through its possessions in transit. Precipitation on the water surface accounts for only 0.3% of the Saratov Reservoir's supply, and surface inflow - 99.7%. The Sok, Samara, Bolshoi and Maly Irgiz rivers carry water into it.

Thanks to the relatively rapid water exchange, the ice regime of the Saratov Reservoir is much lighter than the ice regime of the Kuibyshev Sea located behind the dam of the Volzhskaya HPP named after Lenin. The Saratov Reservoir usually freezes around the 20th of November, and is cleared of ice in mid-April. The navigation period on the Lower Volga is 24 days longer than on the Middle Volga - it is equal to 224 days.

The wet walls of the lock quickly slide upward, lowering the ship to the level of the last, deepest and longest Volga reservoir - the Volgograd reservoir. Its length is 546 km, the average depth exceeds 10 m, but in terms of area the Volgograd Reservoir ranks only third. From Volsk to Saratov, along its right bank stretch the gloomy Serpentine Mountains. Early spring and late autumn their white chalk peaks and gray, in places almost black, slopes resemble the delicate design of an ancient engraving. In summer, the shores are dusted with light chestnut dust from the steppes. The sky is cloudless, faded from the heat, and in the evenings the wind brings the smells of ripe bread and dry herbs to the river. The longest bridge in Europe was built across the Volga near Saratov. However, the river here is so wide and powerful that the bridge is lost in its vastness and does not make a big impression.

Beyond the village of Zolotoe, the right bank of the Volga breaks down to the water with a pinkish-yellow limestone wall. The bottom is decorated with dark lilac screes, and the top is covered with such a thin layer of soil that it seems that it could be rolled up like a carpet, along with the houses and trees. The pinkish-yellow wall gives way to greenish, the greenish to gray, trimmed with yellow and purple stripes. The Kamyshin Ears are the name given to the outcrops of gray quartzite sandstones near Kamyshin. From the depths of thousands of years they brought to us imprints of plants of the Tertiary period, similar to patterns on frozen glass.

Kamyshin is famous not only for the natural beauty in its vicinity. In this city, for the first time in Russia, D. Perry measured the water flow in the Volga in August 1700. The resulting value turned out to be 6360 m3/s. On its basis, the annual flow of the great Russian river into the Caspian Sea was determined by D. Perry to be 235 km3.

Previously, the water content of the Volga in the area now occupied by the Volgograd Reservoir varied greatly depending on the year and season. According to observations over more than 80 years, from 1879 to 1962, the average annual water flow near Volgograd was 8380 m3/s. Moreover, in the year 1926, which was rich in precipitation, it was 12,400 m3/s, while the highest average daily water flow in the spring of this year reached 51,900 m3/s. And in the dry year of 1921, the average annual water flow near Volgograd was only 5180 m3/s. The high floods that previously occurred on the Lower Volga are evidenced by the fact that the city of Tsaritsyn, originally founded on the island, was moved to a high place on the main bank after several floods in the 16th century. During periods of summer and winter low water, water flow in the Lower Volga sometimes decreased to 1000 m3/s. At the end of the 20s of our century, summer on the Volga was very hot, and the river became so shallow that the sands sliding along its bed near Saratov formed “hills” up to 5 m high, among which lakes with warm water. Navigation on the right bank of the river was supported only by non-stop dredging operations. After the regulation of the Lower Volga, its flow, according to M. S. Pakhomov, increased by 15-29% during low-water years in high-water years, and by 60-70% in low-water years. Currently, the average annual river flow near Volgograd is about 7650 m3/s. Downstream, without receiving additional nutrition from tributaries, the Volga loses about 6% of its flow. The last tributary of the great river, Eruslan, flows into the Volgograd Reservoir above the city of Kamyshin. By the way, Eruslan runs along the zero horizontal line, and the area located to the south of it lies below the level of the Baltic Sea, from which it is customary to measure the heights of the earth’s surface.

The hydrological regime of the Volgograd Reservoir is determined by the operation of hydroelectric power stations and economic water releases. Typically, fluctuations in the water level in it are about 2 m. The Volgograd hydroelectric power station has created such water and thermal regimes that ice cover on the Volga now spreads not from north to south, but vice versa - from Astrakhan to Volgograd. The edge of the ice usually approaches Volgograd in late December, but below the hydroelectric dam there still remains a polynya, the length of which in mild winters reaches 60 km or more. Winter is a turbulent time for river workers in Volgograd. Due to fluctuations in water levels, the ice constantly breaks, and so many ice floes pile up on the landing stage that it has to be moved from place to place. There is a known case when a landing stage moved 12 times during the winter.

Near the dam of the Volgograd hydroelectric power station, its left branch, Akhtuba, branches off from the Volga. From here to the mouth it is still more than 600 km, but the nature here is already different. The Volga Upland ends at Volgograd; further to the south there is a semi-desert zone, through which the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain runs like a wide ribbon to the Caspian Sea.

Akhtuba near Volgograd looks like a very ordinary Volozhka, not inspiring much respect, but it accompanies the Volga, maintaining contact with it from time to time through channels, for 450 km. During floods, there are 279 watercourses in the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain. If it were possible to put them all together and then stretch them into one line, its length would be 4800 km. The width of the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain ranges from 15 to 45 km. It stretches like a green oasis among the sun-scorched desert lands, where in some places only spots of white, aquamarine and golden-red salt lakes sparkle. There are no rivers or streams around, only rare wells, the names of which speak of longing for fresh water - “Bitter Drink”, “Three Sheep”.

The banks of the Volga after Volgograd gradually lower, the trees disappear. Enlivening the dull landscape, only the holes of the nests of shore swallows darken in the cliffs above the water. Then they disappear too - the banks become completely low. A wide ribbon of river winds among sandy islands overgrown with bushes. You won’t understand whether it’s the main shore or the islands... And you can’t see people. The Lower Volga is deserted, even now deserted. What was it like before?!

The first military settlements appeared here in the 16th century; A. Jenkinson, an English traveler and ambassador, counted six of them. The first guard of 50 archers stood 7 versts below Perevoloka, and the sixth, last, 30 versts above Astrakhan. The archers must have felt uncomfortable on the great Russian river, the only road that connected them with distant Russia.

In spring and autumn, thick white fogs are common in the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain. Sometimes they spread over a considerable distance, and sometimes they are surprisingly local, so that from a distance they can be mistaken for a small cloud descending from the sky and entangled in the coastal reeds. You can't swim in fog. And when visibility is good, you have to be very careful here. This is not a reservoir - a river. The fairway is not wide and very winding. It seems that the ship on your left side is moving along the neighboring channel, but some time passes - and it turns out to be directly in front of you on the course. The bright sun alternately burns the starboard side of the ship, then the left. And in the evening the red and yellow lights of the buoys and cross-sections light up on the river. Winking mockingly, they surround the ship from all sides, and those uninitiated in the secrets of navigation finally lose all orientation in the surrounding space. The thick aroma of blossoming leaves, herbs and some flowers flows from the shore in waves. And then, when the shore becomes dark in one mass, the moon will rise and a lunar path will run across the water. Shining with lights, an oncoming ship will float by, shower you for a moment with the noise of cheerful voices, music, laughter - and again you will be surrounded by the darkness of a wide and quiet river. The diesel engines will hum smoothly and calmly, as if alive, and the hull of the ship will tremble slightly as it confidently makes its way through the lights of the ship’s environment scattered around. By the way, lighting of buoys and gauges was introduced only at the end of the last century; before that people did not swim on rivers at night.

Before regulation, the Volga flooded in the spring away from the riverbed, sometimes 25-30 km. In other years, the water level in the river rose by 8-8.5 m near Volgograd, and by 5.5 m near Astrakhan, flooding low-lying lands. Now there are no spring floods below Volgograd. All that remains from the past are changes in the water level in the river during surges and surges from the Caspian Sea. The southerly wind, locally called moraine, raises the water near Astrakhan sometimes 2 m above normal or more, causing in the Volga reverse current. “Tides” caused by the seaweed reach the city of Enotaevsk. Northerly winds can cause the river horizon near Astrakhan to drop by 80 cm, while the fresh Volga stream can be traced out to sea at a distance of 55 km.

Astrakhan is located on 11 islands. Wherever you go, there are channels and canals everywhere - Kutum, Bolda, Kizan, Cossack Erik, Pervomaisky Canal. It is interesting to note that the Pervomaisky Canal, running from the Volga to the city center, was dug at the beginning of the 18th century by order of Peter I. Probably earlier, when there were ships and boats in all the channels and eriks of Astrakhan, the city looked like Venice.

In our time, it takes ten to fifteen minutes to walk from the Astrakhan Kremlin to the pier. In the 18th century, the Volga flowed under its walls. In recent centuries, the main flow of the river has always moved in a westerly direction. In the 16th century, A. Jenkinson descended into the Caspian Sea along the deep and deep Volga branch Bolde; Adam Olearius in the 17th century could no longer use this route; he walked further west - along the Ivanchug branch. In the 18th - early 19th centuries, the Volga itself served as the road to the sea, but then its bed began to be covered with sand and severely fragmented into branches. It was necessary to move the shipping route even further west - to Bakhtemir.

Volga Delta

Astrakhan smells of the sea, although it is still 200 km from here, and 50 km from the delta. The beginning of the delta is considered to be the place where the large Bakhtemir channel separates from the Volga. From here begins a particularly intensive division of the Volga and its channels into multiple branches. At the beginning of our millennium, the Volga flowed into the Caspian Sea in 70 branches, at least as many as are indicated in the Tale of Bygone Years. In the 40s of the 20th century, the Volga had about 800 branches, while the total length of all watercourses of the Volga delta was approximately 70 thousand km, which is almost 20 times the length of the river itself. Currently, the number of Volga branches is decreasing again, and the delta region is shifting to the south. From 1930 to 1951, the level of the Caspian Sea dropped by 2.05 m and continues to fall, although now not so intensely.

The Volga delta is a complex interweaving of countless branches and channels over an area of ​​19 thousand km2. There are many oxbow lakes, floods, or locally called ilmens, islands, islets and impassable green jungles in shallow waters. Along the banks of some channels there are gallery plantings of willow, others are bordered by a dense wall of reeds - you float along a green corridor, sometimes for more than an hour, seeing nothing but the sky above your head. You can swim along some channels with oars, along others only with a pole, and in some of them it is better not to meddle with a pole, they are so densely overgrown with various aquatic plants. Water chestnut flowers froze on the water like white butterflies. Its four-horned, anchor-like fruits reach a diameter of 50 cm. Astrakhan residents call this plant chilim. But we are not exploring the main wealth of the delta, but the thickets of lotus, or water rose, as it was once called. In total, they occupy about 2 thousand hectares. More than 60 years ago, in 1919, V.I. Lenin signed a decree on the creation of the Astrakhan State Reserve in the delta to protect its unique natural resources.

Russia is the largest country in the world by area. The largest rivers on Earth flow over a vast territory: the Ob, Yenisei, Lena, Amur. Among them is the longest river in Europe - the Volga. Its length is 3530 km, and the basin area is 1360 thousand m2.

The Volga River flows in the European part of Russia: from the Valdai Hills in the west, along the eastern side to the Urals, in the south of the country it flows into the Caspian Sea. A small part of the delta extends into the territory of Kazakhstan.

The source of the river is on the Valdai Hills, in the village of Volgoverkhovye, Tver Region. A small stream, receiving about 150,000 tributaries, including 200 small and large rivers, gains power and strength and turns into a mighty river. A special monument to the river was erected at the source site.

The fall of the river along its length does not exceed 250 m. The mouth of the river lies 28 m below sea level. The territory of Russia adjacent to the Volga is called the Volga region. Along the banks of the river there are four million-plus cities: Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Samara and Volgograd. The first large settlement on the Volga from the source is the city of Rzhev, and the last in the delta is Astrakhan. The Volga is the world's largest river of internal flow, i.e. does not flow into the world's oceans.

The main part of the Volga area, from the source to Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan, is located in the forest zone, the middle part of the basin to Samara and Saratov is in the forest steppe zone, the lower part - to Volgograd in the steppe zone, and to the south in the semi-desert zone.

The Volga is usually divided into three parts: the upper Volga - from the source to the mouth of the Oka, the middle Volga - from the confluence of the Oka to the mouth of the Kama, and the lower Volga - from the confluence of the Kama to the confluence with the Caspian Sea.

History of the river

For the first time, a Greek scientist spoke about the river. Then information about the Volga is found in the notes of the Persian king Darius, who described his campaigns against the Scythian tribes. Roman sources speak of the Volga as a “generous river”, hence the name “Ra”. In Rus', the river is spoken of in the famous “Tale of Bygone Years”.

Since the times of Rus', the Volga has been an important trade link - an artery where the Volga trade route was established. Through this route, Russian merchants traded in oriental fabrics, metal, honey, and wax.

After the conquest of the Volga basin, trade flourished, the peak of which occurred in the 17th century. Over time, a river fleet arose on the Volga.

In the 19th century, an army of barge haulers worked on the Volga, which is the subject of a painting by a Russian artist. At that time, huge reserves of salt, fish, and bread were transported along the Volga. Then cotton was added to these goods, and later oil.

During Civil War The Volga was the main strategic point, which provided the army with bread and food, and also made it possible to quickly transfer forces with the help of the fleet.

Painting by Ilya Repin "Barge Haulers on the Volga", 1872-1873

When Soviet power was established in Russia, the river began to be used as a source of electricity. In the 20th century, 8 hydroelectric power stations were built on the Volga.

During World War II, the Volga was the most important river for the USSR, as armies and food supplies were transferred across it. In addition, the largest battle took place on the Volga, in Stalingrad (now Volgograd).

Currently, the Volga basin produces oil and natural gas reserves that support the Russian economy. In some areas, potassium and table salt are mined.

Flora and fauna of the river

The Volga is predominantly snow-fed (60%), partly rain-fed (10%), and groundwater feeds the Volga by 30%. The water in the river is advantageously warm; in the summer the temperature does not drop below +20-25 degrees. The river freezes at the end of November in the upper reaches, and in the lower reaches - in December. The river is frozen 100-160 days a year.

The river is home to large populations of fish: crucian carp, pike perch, perch, ide, pike. Also in the waters of the Volga live catfish, burbot, ruffe, sturgeon, bream and sterlet. In total there are about 70 species of fish.

Birds live in the Volga delta: ducks, swans, herons. Flamingos and pelicans live on the Volga. And the famous flowers also grow - lotuses. Although the Volga is heavily polluted by industrial enterprises, aquatic vegetation (lotus, water lily, reed, water chestnut) is still preserved in it.

Tributaries of the Volga

Approximately 200 tributaries flow into the Volga, and most of them are on the left side. The left tributaries are much richer in water than the right ones. The most major influx The Volga is the Kama River. Its length reaches 2000 km. The influx begins on the Verkhnekamsk Upland. The Kama has more than 74 thousand tributaries, 95% are rivers up to 10 km long.

Hydrotechnical studies also indicate that the Kama is older than the Volga. But the last ice age and the construction of reservoirs on the Kama seriously reduced its length.

In addition to the Kama, tributaries of the Volga stand out:

• Sura;
• Tvertsa;
• Sviyaga;
• Vetluga;
• Unzha;
• Mologa et al.

Tourism on the Volga

The Volga is a picturesque river, so tourism is thriving on it. Volga gives the opportunity to short term visit a large number of Volga region cities. Cruises along the Volga are a common type of recreation on the river.

The journey lasts from 3-5 days to a month. It includes a visit to the most beautiful cities in the country located along the Volga. The favorable period for traveling along the Volga is from the beginning of May to the end of September.

• The Kama, a tributary of the Volga, hosts an annual sailing competition - the largest in Europe.
• The Volga appears in literary and works of art Russian classics: Repin.
• Feature films have been made about the Volga, including “Volga, Volga” in 1938, “A Bridge is Being Built” in 1965.

• The Volga is considered to be the “homeland of barge haulers.” Sometimes 600 thousand barge haulers could work hard on it at the same time.
• Controversial point: it is generally accepted that the Kama is a tributary of the Volga River. But geographers and hydrologists are still arguing which river is the main one. The fact is that at the confluence of the Volga rivers it carries 3,100 cubic meters of water per second, but the “productivity” of the Kama is 4,300 cubic meters per second. It turns out that the Volga ends just below Kazan, and then the Kama River flows further, and it is the Kama that flows into the Caspian Sea.

• The Arabs, impressed by the scale of the Volga, named it “Itil”, which means “river” in Arabic.
• Every day the Volga pours 250 cubic kilometers of water into the Caspian Sea. However, the level of this sea continues to decline steadily.
• On May 20, Russia celebrates Volga Day.

Chekhov's classic phrase “The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea” has become an example of a banal statement. In fact, the answer to the question of where the Volga flows is not as obvious as it seems. It lies in such areas of science as hydrography, toponymy, geography, etc.

Great River

The ancient Volga appeared on Earth about 23 million years ago. Most likely, the date of birth of the great river is even more ancient - studies show that the Volga had smaller predecessors, not of such significant size.

The Volga is the largest river in the European part of the Eurasian continent. Its length is about 3,530 km. Unlike many other rivers connected to the World Ocean, the Volga flows into a large inland body of water that does not have direct access to the open ocean. This unique formation is called the Caspian Sea.

Ancient Volga

During the birth of the Volga, the movement of tectonic plates began, which led to the emergence of the Central Russian Upland and the Valdai Mountains. The tectonic process was accompanied by the incision of numerous ancient river channels into the base rocks of the plate. At that time, the beginning of the Volga River appeared.

And where does the Volga flow in those distant times? Geological data confirm that the Ancient Caspian Sea was much wider in those days, and moreover, it had open access to the world's oceans. Then, as now, the Caspian received the waves of the ancient Volga and all its tributaries.

At that time the river bed was a little more different than it is now. It arose in the deepest part of a large trench that stretched from modern Kazan to Volgograd. It was he who became the first channel of the paleo-Volga.

Later, processes that arose as a result of the onset of the Ice Age smoothed out the relief features. The area was gradually filled with sedimentary rocks. The Volga continued its development, flowing along an already flat plain. In the geography of the Volga channel of that time, familiar coastal reliefs had already appeared. And the area where the Volga flows has acquired modern contours.

Estuary and tributaries of the Volga

Quite a lot of scientific papers have been written about where the Volga begins and where it flows. In the process of its development, the Volga grew with numerous tributaries and repeatedly changed the location of its delta, but this great river left its source unchanged.

The Valdai Upland is the cradle of many large rivers. Rivers such as the Dnieper, Lovat, Western Dvina, Msta and many smaller water arteries originate here. The largest water artery in Europe was no exception. The first part of the answer to the question - where the Volga begins and where it flows - lies here, in these Russian mountains. The Volga carries its waters from the Valdai Hills. The place where the river originates is in the Tver region and is called the Volgino Verkhovye.

But there are small problems with the place where the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. The fact is that many researchers disagree with the standard answer to the school problem about where the Volga begins and where it flows. The well-known spring in Valdai is far from the only source of the great Volga; it is quite possible that it has many more sources, and some of them are underground.

Tributaries of the Volga

As for the tributaries, the Volga has a lot of them. The largest of them are Mologa, Samara, Ob, Kama, Eruslan and many others. Of all the above, the widest and deepest tributary is the Kama River. It merges with the Volga very close to the shores of the Caspian Sea. So, maybe the Volga flows into the Kama, and not into the sea?

Signs of river confluence

Hydrobiologists use several indicators to determine which river is the main one and which is its tributary. At the confluence of the waters of both rivers, scientists determine their water content, drainage area, structural features of the river system, the length of both rivers from source to confluence, river flow indicators and several others.

In terms of water content, these two rivers are almost equal to each other. The average annual flow of the Volga is 3750 m 3 /sec, and that of the Kama - 3800 m 3 /sec. In terms of catchment area, the Volga is ahead of its rival - 260.9 thousand km 2 versus 251.7 thousand km 2. The height of the Volga basin is lower than that of the Kama basin, since the tributaries of the Kama originate in the Ural Mountains. The Kama Valley is older than the Volga Valley - it was formed in the first half of the Quaternary period, even before the Great Glaciation. At that time, the Kama discharged its waters into the Vychegda. After the end of the Ice Age, the Upper Volga, which previously flowed into the Don, began to flow into the Kama. The Lower Volga today is a natural continuation not of the Volga, but of the Kama Valley.

Hydrography of the Middle Ages

Arab medieval geographers called the Volga by its own name - Itil. They connected the ancient origins of Itil precisely with the Kama. And they paid no less attention to Kama than to her blue rival.

So where is the beginning of the Volga River and where does this water artery flow? All other things being equal, along with hydrographic ones, historical traditions are also taken into account. Established ideas and studies of toponymy allow us to assert that the Kama is a tributary of the Volga River. More precisely, it flows into the Kuibyshev Reservoir, located at the confluence of two rival rivers. And to the question of where the Volga flows, one can answer: into the waters of the Caspian Sea, but it should be remembered that this answer is dictated more by historical tradition than by real hydrographic indicators.